


Bruise

by Kagemihari (soracia)



Category: Tennis no Oujisama | Prince of Tennis
Genre: Character Study, Introspection, M/M, POV Third Person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-10-08
Updated: 2005-10-08
Packaged: 2017-10-24 09:28:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 790
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/261797
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/soracia/pseuds/Kagemihari
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Shinji likes blue, any kind of blue, but he can't remember when it stopped being his favorite color.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bruise

**Author's Note:**

> For [](http://lethanon.livejournal.com/profile)[**lethanon**](http://lethanon.livejournal.com/), because I owe her one. Apologies that it is rather weird. Then again... it's Shinji. XD

Blue had always been Shinji's favorite color. All different shades of blue... blue like water, blue like the sky, blue like the hidden deepness of the sea. Blue like Akira's eyes, and Shinji's own hair. Blue like familiarity. Blue like knowing things, understanding things because they've always been that way.

Blue like rivals--Hyotei, Seigaku, blue like that Shishido guy's hat and Rikkai's sick captain's hair. Blue like perfection, like winning. Blue like finding the edge in a close game and hitting it just exactly right, and crushing your opponent with it. Blue like knowing there are no limits, except the ones you place on yourself.

Blue like peace, blue like loneliness, and maybe they were the same thing, after all. Blue like wanting something you couldn't have. Blue like the comfort of not thinking at all.

Shinji likes blue, any kind of blue, but he can't remember when it stopped being his favorite color.

Maybe when Fudomine became more than just a place he had to go to school, and turned into a purpose and a meaning. Pride. Maybe the first time that he saw Tachibana-san's eyes, and realized that black was just as deep as blue, in a different way, but warmer.

Black like determination, like strength and certainty. Safety. Black like asphalt, keep on walking. Black like shadows, a place to hide. Black like anger that's thrilling and attractive, as long as it's directed at someone else. Black like quietness when you didn't have to say anything, to know you were understood.

Black like belief, like truth and absolute, black like the fear that comes when you find something important that you never, ever want to lose. Black like never wanting to see the frown that means you didn't get it--you did something wrong, you were a disappointment or a failure or a disgrace. Black like the guilt of a quiet, sad smile that means acceptance in spite of it all.

Black like comfort, black like strong arms around you, black like laying awake in the middle of the night, but not cold. Black like burning, like the char that fire left in its wake, except that it was more like ashes, banked and smoldering. Still hot. Heat, soft touches you couldn't see, but you didn't need to see because you knew what it looked like anyway, forever burned into your mind, and you could feel.

Black like finally finding that what you wanted, was something you could have.

Sometimes though, when black got close, very close to blue, they were almost the same thing. Black in the sky, like midnight, but it was still blue... very dark blue, so blue that it was black, and maybe it was two colors mixed together, but still both there in the same sky. Not a meeting of light and dark, but rather, of different kinds of darkness. Like, and yet not like.

Blue and black, together but separate, different but the same; deep and quiet and still and perfect, somehow, making a new color when you mixed them together. Side by side, fading into one another until the line between them is no longer distinct.

Shinji thinks it's not so much that black is his new favorite color, as it is that his favorite blue is no longer complete without this black. They belong together, black and blue like the colors of a bruise--a mark, like that of fingers holding just a little too tight, like the dark smudges left behind sometimes with faint teeth marks. A mark not just on his skin but on his heart, proof of a claim, a seal, a possessive kind of belonging.

Maybe he shouldn't like it so much, that particular blend of colors, marbled in just that way on his skin, in his mind, on his soul. Maybe it shouldn't feel so right, so good, but it makes him smile, anyway, a little, secret smile, when his fingers brush the blue-black smudge and it aches, just a little bit--hurts good in a subtle, under the skin way.

Shinji likes that too--the idea that these colors, his colors, have gotten under his skin, marked him on the inside and he doesn't really want them to fade, to go away and leave him the same as he was before. He knows he isn't, not where it matters, he'll never be the same again because this bruise, this mark, this brand on his heart and soul has changed him.

Now he's different. He's not alone, not afraid, not unsteady. He's stronger and better, complete now, and he knows where he belongs--blue with black.

Black and blue.

Bruised.

He smiles, that faint, mysterious almost smirk, and goes in search of darkness.  



End file.
